Rates of dementia and depression higher

"We've known the rates of dementia are very high but our more recent research suggests that the rates of falls, bladder problems, pain, pervasive pain and depression are also a fair bit higher than in the non-Indigenous communities in the rest of Australia," he said.

"And, the other thing that's very concerning is [it is happening] at an earlier age.

"Dementia is very, very common in the Kimberley.

"Some people might need help having a wash, they might need help getting to the shop to buy their groceries."

Ruth Crawford

"We're looking at [Aboriginal] people over the age of 45 years versus non-Indigenous people in the rest of Australia, over say the age of 70, and they're having similar percentage proportion of problems."

Professor Flicker says depending on the condition, the symptom rates occurred 30 to 50 per cent more often in remote communities than non-Indigenous people experienced in metropolitan areas.

The findings reflect Ms Crawford's experience.

"Things like having a stroke, having bad heart problems, having dementia," she said.

"Dementia is very, very common in the Kimberley, especially in younger age groups.

"Those types of conditions you wouldn't normally see until people are much older if you worked in say Sydney or Melbourne."

Ms Crawford says there is an extreme difference between the remote clients she treats and what might be experienced working in the city.

"We have a very high amount of people over the age of 45 to 60, which would be very, very unusual if you work somewhere else in Australia," she said.

"You would have very few people in that category; they would only be people perhaps who were disabled, or who'd been disabled since they were born.

"You rarely see people with aged care conditions in that age group.

"So often people often think aged care clients as being 65-70 and so to change the thinking that, no, well in fact it's these 45-year-olds."

Being overweight and diabetic an issue

"Many of the syndromes often result from other conditions, or pre-morbid conditions as we say, in younger age groups," she said.

"So, we know that people who have diabetes, or who are overweight or who have high blood pressure, they're more prone to getting these conditions."

Professor Flicker says a solution now needs to be found.

"It's also some common health problems that need better management in remote communities - things like diabetes, renal disease, heart disease," he said.

"I think as a whole, both the communities and the service providers are really receptive.

"They can see the problem and hopefully will be trying to work out some solutions."

He says prevention is key.

"Prevention is a whole of life approach so we have to start young and make sure that people know about healthier lifestyles and what's important and if you do develop diabetes, how important it is to manage that condition," he said.

Prevention and correct treatment are key

Dr Flicker says they are not forgetting about older people with the conditions.

He and the team have begun developing a booklet targeting these areas.

"A lot of these resources have been developed for people in urban areas in Australia and they're not necessarily applicable to people who live in these remote communities," he said.

"For example, we've know for a while that people who have memory problems, which is more often experienced by older people in remote Indigenous communities, that we didn't have a good way of testing that.

"Some years ago we developed a cognitive assessment tool to measure memory problems in older people in Aboriginal communities, and that's been rolled out and we've talked about ways to use that and develop it.

"We're now in the same process of doing the same things for depression, trying to work out the issues about falls, how to do some simple questions and work out who are most at risk of falls and what we can do to intervene that's appropriate for remote communities."